A fascinating account of more
than 80
insect "firsts." Velcro, bungee jumping, air conditioning, and
chemical warfare are a few of the firsts covered in this book authored
by three
professional entomologists. Illustrations include humorous
anthropomorphized insects as well as photos and micrographs. It
is
written for a general audience but is of special interest to teachers
and entomologists.

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TABLE OF
CONTENTS

1. Architects

2. Gourmet

3. Tunnel Builders

4. Paper

5. Antifreeze

6. Camouflage

7. Warning Coloration

8. Flight

9. Bikinis

10. Communication by Sound

11. Air Conditioning

12. Food Storage

13. Domestic Animals

14. Highways

15. Recycling

16. Slavery

17. Gardening

18. Compass

19. Sewing or Lashing

20. Scuba Diving

21. Chemical Defense

22. Antibiotics/Medicines

23. Perfumes/Pheromones

24. Radar/Sonar

25. Radar Jamming Device

26. Fungicides

27. Social Behavior/Societies

28. Glue

29. Dominance Hierarchies

30. Insect Control

31. Gift Giving

32. Construction Materials

33. Plywood

34. Brain Washers

35. Pipe Liners

36. Caste

37. Reinforced Tubing

38. Cannibalism

39. Thermometer

40. Full of It!

41. Kamikaze

42. Puffed Up or Inflation of the Body

43. Drug Use

44. Following Signs

45. Problems With Insects

46. Armor

47. Vampire

48. Polluters

49. Hypodermic

50. Acrobats

51. Blinking Neon Sign

52. Velcro

53. Superball

54. Original Big or Swelled Heads

55. Natural Polyesters

56. Begging

57. Tool Use

58. Opposable Thumb

59. Mimicry

60. Bungee Jumpers

61. Robbers

62. Clocks

63. Baskets and Pots

64 Ballooning

65. Preservation Without Freezing

66. Head Screwed on Straight?

67. Communes

68. Alphabet

69. Humming

70. Fishing Net

71. Dyes

72. Break Sound Barrier

73. Cannon

74. Arms Race

75. Bridges

76. Sexual Bias

77. Red Light District

78. Kinky Sex

79. Sexual Bondage

80. Switch Sex.

81. Gays

Orders of Insects

References

Index

The original ideas on
"insects did it first" started with Dr. Roger Akre's first class in
general entomology at Washington State University in 1964. Each
time some
advanced human technology, such as radar or sonar, became the topic of
the day
Roger realized that "people aren't really all that original - insects
did
it first." Soon he started writing down all the ideas that
occurred
to him on this topic, even in the middle of lectures, be it general
entomology,
insect behavior, or insect morphology.

Dr. Akre also started to make
color
slides of insects with the idea that perhaps he could someday make
"first's" a special topic in his general entomology class. He
was aided in his endeavors by several colleagues with artistic talents,
Paul
Catts and Robert Harwood, both entomologists at Washington State
University,
and by Dr. William B. Garnett, from the University of Cincinnati.
All
produced cartoons of the topics for slide lectures. The topics
grew and
interest was expressed by a great number of people, especially those
who give
insect talks to young scientists from the age of 3 to 30. They
wanted
copies of the slides and references to the material to create their own
talks.

The thought of publishing
"First" as a book occurred to Roger in 1986. By this time,
students, colleagues, and friends were well acquainted with his
interests in
this area, and one, Greg Paulson, even located a book in 1987 that was
similar
in topic to the contents of this book. Lucy Berman and Roy Combs
published
"Wonderbaarlijke Nature" in Europe in 1971. In 1972 an English
translation of this book, entitled "Nature Thought of It First," was
printed by Grosset and Dunlop. Their book covers all animals,
while ours
concentrates solely on insects, treating them in much greater
detail.
Still another book, with nearly identical ideas and even a close title,
"Nature Invented It First," was authored by R. E. Hutchins (1980).

"Insects Did It First" is
organized into 81 chapters; each concerns a different achievement in
which
insects have precedence over other animals, including humans.
Each
chapter includes references to books and scientific papers in which the
achievement or behavior is described. In most instances, several
different insects are used as examples to illustrate the variety and
extent of
the "first." Each chapter is illustrated with a cartoon and, in
many cases, a photograph. When appropriate, the order and family
of the
insect are included in the text. Family names can be easily
recognized because
they always end in -idea. A complete list of the insect orders
can be
found on page 138. Several topics in this book deal with sexual
or other
topics that some people might find sensitive, especially in regard to
younger
grade school children. With this in mind we placed those chapters
at the
end of the book so they can easily be excluded if this is deemed
appropriate.

SAMPLE
CHAPTERS

We take
paper for granted.
It is used in a vast number of ways- newspapers, magazines, books,
packaging,
boxes, and even tableware. Modern paper is made by machines and
is
incredibly uniform in thickness and smoothness, essentially without
blemish. However, paper making was once a laborious process as
plant
fibers of various types were wetted and spread out to dry.

Nevertheless, hundreds of
thousands of
years before mankind's first efforts, the world's first paper makers
were
collecting weathered fibers from plants that were chewed and mixed with
saliva
to make paper for nests. These paper makers were the yellow
jackets
(Edwards 1980, McGovern et al. 1988, Spradbery 1973), umbrella or paper
wasps,
hornets, and the social wasps of the Central and South American
tropics, the polybiines
(Akre 1982)(all Hymenoptera: Vespidae). The fiber they gather is
made
into a hard paper, called carton, used for constructing cells for their
brood
and the envelope which encloses the nest. The nest envelopes
often are of
interesting color patterns depending on the source of the original
plant
fibers. Some wasps even incorporate bits of sand into their paper
for
strength and hardness.The envelope covering most nests
is an
excellent insulator. It is laid down in layers with air spaces
between.
Wasps make maximum use of dead air spaces in their nest construction to
help
regulate the internal temperature of the nest. In addition, some
species
of yellow jackets build these paper nests in a cavity below the surface
of the
soil which also tends to protect the nest and brood from fluctuations
in
temperature.

Only birds,
bats,
insects, and humans fly. Obviously the first into the air were
the
insects, and in many ways they are still the best and most versatile
fliers. The basic mechanism of flight is based on a click
mechanism that
suddenly transmits nearly all the stored muscle energy of the thorax to
the
down or power stroke of the wings (see Chapter 53) (Chapman 1982,
Pringle
1975, Ross et al. 1982). Variations in flying abilities include
insects
that have the ability to hover in one place such as dragonflies
(Odonata), bot
flies (Diptera: Oestridae), bee flies (Diptera: Bombyliidae), and hover
flies
(also known as flower flies) (Diptera: Syrphidae). These insects
possess
a unique flip mechanism that causes the wing to sweep obliquely up and
down
through a small angle (Weis-Fogh 1975). Certain damselflies
(Odonata) in
Panama are known locally as helicopter bugs because the movement of the
golden
stigma (pigmented spot on the forewings) as the insect hovers in flight
is
reminiscent of the colored rotors of helicopters. These
damselflies hover
in front of spider webs while stealing prey from the web.

Most of what people learn is
seen, not
heard. However, sound is obviously important to us as we have
spoken
languages and appreciate an array of sounds as music. Insects
also make
music and make extensive use of sound for communication (Kerkut &
Gilbert
1985, Wigglesworth 1972). Some have extremely elaborate
instruments for
the production of these sounds (Snodgrass 1923).

Some termites and ants beat
their heads
against the walls of their nests to signal alarm, while certain aphids
stomp
their feet or bang their abdomens on the substrate to signal alarm to
other
aphids (Bowers et al. 1972). Perhaps the most sophisticated and
highly
developed use of sound is by bees, including stingless bees and honey
bees. Honey bees, Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera:
Apidae),
emit pulse trains of sound, produced by wing vibration, during their
waggle
dance that convey information to nestmates about the distance to a food
source
(Esch 1967, Gould & Gould 1988, Winston 1987). Species of Melipona
(Hymenoptera: Meliponidae), a stingless bee, also use a "morse code"
of sound to indicate distance to the food source to their hivemates
(Esch
1967). Other sounds made by honey bees include the warning buzz
of
disturbed workers and the piping of the queen that calms disturbed
workers. Other queen-produced sounds are tooting (sometimes
called
piping) and quacking. Tooting is the sound made by a virgin queen
soon
after she emerges as an adult, and quacking is the sound made by new
queens
that are forcefully retained inside their cells by the workers.
Eventually, they are released to challenge all other queens (Wenner
1964).

The most complex song known
for insects
is produced by Uhler's katydid (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae)(Walker &
Dew
1972), but even the lowly fruit flies (Diptera: Drosophilidae) produce
songs of
love and courtship (Bennet-Clark & Ewing 1970).

Humans have
domesticated a few species of animals to use as beasts of burden or as
food. The more common domestic animals are cows, horses, pigs,
chickens,
dogs, and cats. However insects kept "domesticated animals"
much earlier than we did. One such association is between certain
ants
and the larvae of lycaenid butterflies (blues) (Lepidoptera:
Lycaenidae).
The caterpillars possess special glands, called Hinton's glands, that
produce
an ant attracting chemical. They also have a honey or Newcomer's
gland
that produces a substance the ants like to eat (Kistner 1982). In
return,
the caterpillars are protected from insect predators by the ants.

A more familiar situation is
presented
by ants tending aphids (Homoptera: Aphididae) and other Homoptera
(Wilson
1971). This relationship is called mutualism because both the
ants and
the aphids gain mutual benefit from the association. Mutualistic
relationships exist between many genera and species of ants. Not
only do
ants carry aphids to their host plants and protect them (Wilson 1971),
but at
least one ant species responds aggressively to an alarm pheromone (see
Chapter
23) released by the aphids. When the aphids are disturbed the
ants will
attack any insects or other intruders in the immediate area (Kistner
1982).Ants, as well as some other
kinds of
insects, collect a sugary substance called honeydew that is excreted by
a
number of other sap-feeding insects in the order Homoptera including
scales
(Coccidae), pine/spruce aphids (Chermidae), psyllids (Psyllidae),
treehoppers
(Membracidae), leafhoppers (Jassidae), froghoppers (Cercopidae), and
planthoppers (Fulgoridae) (Wilson 1971). In one species, Trabutina
mannipara (Ehrenberg) (Coccidae), the material is so abundant at
times that
it is collected by both ants and humans for food. This is
believed to be
the manna mentioned in the Bible.